Wednesday, October 4, 2017

6 tools to help pump up your blogging game

Veteran bloggers are familiar with the highs and lows of the writing process.

One week you'll feel unstoppable, but the next two can be a struggle to achieve the minimum word count. You might write several articles a week, but a slight hiccup in the writing process can cause you to come to a screeching halt.

Whether you become distracted with another task, you lose your train of thought in endless buzzwords or your brain turns to mush, you can rebound and boost your productivity if you use the proper tools.

Check out the following six tools to help produce outstanding blog posts:

1. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo can give you ideas on what to write. Use it to search the popular articles linked to either a specific site (to help tailor your guest posts) or around a keyword you want to target.

The tool can help you understand the topics that perform well with your target audience and provides a summary of the competition. If you want to place your byline on a specific site, find a keyword for which you want to rank or are stuck for ideas, BuzzSumo is the way to go.

2. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is one of the best tools for batch analyzing hundreds of keywords. Once you know what you want to write about and have run your keyword research process to get potential terms, run them through this tool to gather their volume and a rough summary of the competition.

If you're writing three or more posts a week, you can't spend hours on keyword research. Using Google's batch analysis method can dramatically cut down your research time.

3. Ahrefs

Use Ahrefs to know what competition you'll have with certain terms. Place the top keyword(s) you want to target into Ahref's Keyword Explorer, and you can see the strength of websites that currently rank for those terms, along with suggestions of other related keywords.

As an added bonus, the Site Explorer feature gives a rundown of any domain's top keywords, traffic, backlinks and more. Multiple keywords can be a pain to analyze, so use this tool with your top keyword candidates.

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4. Focus@Will (or Spotify)

Listening to music or ambient noise while you work can help you focus.

A premium Spotify account can deliver any songs to which you want to listen. It also comes with pre-made focus music playlists, should you feel that your regular jam is too distracting.

Focus@Will is a more tailored experience. Choose from multiple ambient noise, acoustic, electronic or classical music channels, and listen to tracks that have been specifically selected to up your productivity levels.

5. Pomello

Pomello stays at the front of your screen and tracks how long you've spent on a task, how long you have until your next break and when you need to start working again.

The timer is especially useful when onboarding new team members and getting them up to speed. By linking Pomello to their Trello accounts, your staff can see how much time new hires have spent on any given task and can offer help, if required.

6. Grammarly

Whether you consistently mix letters or just make a couple grammatical errors, stopping to correct yourself can break your flow of writing and take you longer to produce the finished product.

Grammarly is a Chrome plugin that checks your spelling and grammar, enabling you to write without too much worry that you'll later have to fine comb your text for errors. There can be a few items which slip under Grammarly's radar, but the magical red lines that point out obvious issues can be a blessing for those looking to keep writing speeds high.

What are your favorite blogging tools?

Benjamin Brandall is a freelance writer and the head of content marketing at Process Street .

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Source: 6 tools to help pump up your blogging game

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